The invention pertains to improvements in the field of touch tone telephone systems having voice mail capability and some mechanism to notify a user when a voice mail message has arrived.
In most telephone systems with voice mail capability, when a voice mail message is left, the phone system attempts to notify the user. This is frequently done by lighting a light on the user""s phone, by sounding a tone when the user picks up the phone or by sending a notification by a radio pager. In the case of radio paging, if the message is not retrieved, then the message is sent by radio pager again. This will happen a fixed number of times such as 5 times. If the message is not retrieved, no other action is taken, and the caller does not receive a response to their message. In some lesser phone voice mail systems, such as the voice mail offered by GTE, radio paging of the arrival of voice mail messages is available in business service for an extra fee, but there is no notification by a light on the phone or by a tone on the phone when the phone is picked up. Either in the GTE type system or other systems where a tone or light is used, if the person called does not have their pager with them or is sick or on vacation, they never receive a notification that a message has arrived, and do not respond to it. This can be annoying to callers and can result in lost business.
Therefore, a need has arisen for a telephone system that has the capability to re-route voice mail messages to the voice mail boxes of other people when the voice mail message left for a first person is not retrieved within a specified time or within a specified number of attempts at notification.
The prior art includes computer systems which provide various voice mail and routing facilities, but no re-routing of voice mail messages after an unsuccessful notification attempt. One example is U.S. Pat. No. 5,581,604 to Robinson et al, filed Feb. 26, 1996 and assigned to Active Voice Corporation. This patent teaches an automated attendant telephone system which provides the extension telephone user more real time options for handling incoming calls. For example, the auto attendant may be instructed to play one of a number of predetermined greetings to a caller including a custom message that is recorded at the time the call is received to be played to a caller before transferring the call to another extension or to voice mail or hanging up or giving the caller the option of adding another extension. The patent also teaches a method comprising the steps of receiving a call, notifying the called party of the call and allowing the called party to select a response to the call from three or more responses, including: 1) rejecting the call and transmitting a first greeting to the caller; 2) rejecting the call and transmitting a second greeting to the caller, and 3) accepting the call.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,623 to Moore et al., filed Jul. 26, 1993 discloses a telephone message system for use in a multiline hunt group with message queuing that provides a caller with the option of leaving a message or going into a holding queue. The hunt group directory number has queuing, call forward busy to the voice mail system and call forward no answer to the voice mail system. Each individual phone line in the hunt group has a telephone number associated with it, and has the call forward busy to voice mail and call forward no answer to voice mail but no queue. An incoming call on any one of the hunt group lines starts the normal hunting activity. If all the incoming telephone lines are busy, the central office switch forwards the incoming call to a voice message mailbox that is associated with the hunt group. Then the caller is given an option of going into the queue or leaving a voice mail message. If the caller wishes to be placed in the queue, the voice messaging system does a supervised transfer to the main directory number of the hunt group such that if all the lines of the hunt group are busy and there is an available slot in the queue, the caller will be placed in the available slot. If any of the hunt group lines are not answered or all the hunt group lines are busy or there are no available slots in the queue, the call is re-routed to the voice mail message box to record a voice mail message.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,636 to Bannister et al., filed Jun. 6, 1995 teaches a system for screening incoming calls based upon role in the new telephony services that give a subscriber a single number that a caller calls and which then route the call to the home, automobile or country club of the called party depending upon the user""s profile and the date and time of the call. Calls are screened by routing calls directed to the user""s home a private role, and calls directed to the subscriber""s business number a business role and calls directed to the subscriber""s country club a golf role. The calls are then routed to the subscriber at a number where the called party is likely to be according to his profile and the date and time of the call and the caller ID data is sent along with the role information. The subscriber can then accept the call or let it go to voice mail with the information about identity of the caller and role to supply context information. With regard to voice mail, the system provides for real time call screening wherein a caller who has been diverted to voice mail can have the recording monitored and, if the called party recognizes the voice or from the content of the message, decides he or she wants to talk to the caller, a key combination can be pressed on the phone to connect the called party to the calling party.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,400,393 to Knuth et al., filed May 6, 1994 teaches a digital telephone answering device that allows messages to be forwarded to certain internal mailboxes. Messages can be sorted to various mailboxes and retrieved by pressing a button associated with each mailbox. Messages can also be moved or re-assigned from a common mailbox to a certain mailbox.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,402,466 to Delahanty filed Oct. 20, 1992 teaches a paging system for notifying a paging service subscriber of an event at a remote location such as a message left on a standard home type answering machine and/or standard alarm system. The system detects when an alarm has been tripped or a valid message has been left, and then dials a number that the user programs into the system. When the paging system answers, the notification system dials a specific code corresponding to the event which has been detected. If a caller has entered a number into an answering machine, that number will be forwarded to the pager.
None of this prior art addresses the specific problem which the system of the invention solves. Specifically, none of the prior art re-routes a voice mail message to another mailbox after a number of failed attempts to notify the person associated with the number first called.
The invention defines a genus of species all of which are capable of automatically re-routing a voice mail message originally left in a first voice mail box after a predetermined number of attempts at notification of the owner of that voice mail box or after a predetermined time to another voice mail box if the owner of the original voice mail box does not pick up the message. The particular hardware or software used to perform this function is not critical and any circuitry and/or software which can perform this function will suffice to practice the invention.
The telephone system described herein is intended to be only one example of the many systems in which the invention can be usefully employed. Any system which performs the functions of re-routing a voice mail message to another voice mail box after a predetermine time of the message originally left in a first voice mail box not being picked up will suffice to practice the invention.
In a typical species within this genus, a company telephone system will have many extensions and one central switching unit comprised of a personal computer expanded with one or more expansion cards containing switching and host adapter interface circuitry. The central switching circuit is coupled via its host adapter interface circuitry and a digital bus to a port expansion unit having an interface card connected to one or more incoming telephone lines from the telephone company central office. The port expansion unit will also be coupled to the various extensions by interface circuit including digital-to-analog converters and analog-to-digital converters and separate drop lines to each extension.
The central switching unit is programmed to implement the voice mail re-routing function. That function is implemented by determining the extension incoming calls or extension to extension calls are dialing and sending a power ring to that extension and determining when the extension is either answered or timeout occurs. If the called extension is answered, a data path for the voice conversation is set up. If the called extension does not answer, the central switching unit sets up a path between a voice expansion interface card containing a digital signal processor and opens a voice mail greeting file. The greeting file contains digital data encoding a voice mail greeting. That digital data is retrieved and transmitted to a digital-to-analog converter coupled to the source of the call. Conversion of the data back to analog form causes the caller to hear a voice mail greeting. Then the central switching unit programs a path to send digital data encoding a beep tone to the digital-to-analog converter coupled to the source of the call so that the caller hears a beep indicating that his or her voice is being recorded as a voice mail message. Incoming analog signals from the caller constituting the caller""s message are converted to digital data and stored on a hard disk by the digital signal processor after the digital signal processor opens up a file corresponding to the voice mail box of the extension which was called.
After the voice mail message has been recorded, its file is closed, and the central switching unit looks for an available incoming telephone line from the central office. When it finds one, it sends commands to an interface circuit coupled to that central office line causing it to go off-hook. The central switching unit then verifies that a dial tone is present, and makes connections between selected time slots containing DTMF touchtone dialing tones generated by a DTMF tone generator on one of its interface cards and the central office line. The selected timeslots contain DTMF tones which dial the phone number of the radio pager of the user that was originally called. The central switching unit then monitors call progress tones for the call to the radio pager so as to determine when to send a numeric message to the pager. When the time arrives, the central switching unit sends whatever numeric message the user that was originally called has stored in a table entry associated with his voice mail box. In some embodiments, the numeric message may be fixed, and in other embodiments, the message is a voice greeting message. In some embodiments, the outgoing message to the pager is either a programmable or fixed numeric message for pager subscribers that do not have voice mail and is, programmably, either a numeric message or a voice message if the pager subscriber has voice mail capability on his pager subscription.
After sending the numeric message, the central switching unit monitors the voice mail box to determine if the message has been retrieved within a certain time limit, which in some embodiments, is programmable.
If the voice mail message is not retrieved within the specified time, the radio pager is called again and another message is left and a counter that keeps track of the number of attempts to notify the user is incremented. When the counter reaches a terminal count, which, in some embodiments is fixed and in other embodiments is programmable, the central switching unit moves the voice mail message to another voice mail box. The particular voice mail box to which the message is moved is programmable in some embodiments and is fixed in other embodiments. For example, in fixed embodiments, when a voice mail message directed to a particular salesman is not retrieved, it is routed to the voice mail box of the vice president of sales who then can take appropriate action to get another salesman to return the call.
The genus of the invention provides a telephone system which provides a higher degree of certainty that messages left by incoming caller will be returned by somebody within a predetermined time to avoid frustration of callers. This a good thing for both businesses and personal relationships.